My friend Conor saw him play in Dublin about a year or so ago. Conor bought me a few of his comics (which he was selling at the gig). I’m big into my comics (as anyone familiar with my humble blog will know) and Jeffry’s were really slick. They detailed, amongst other things, his travels about Europe.

A few months later I saw this really slick video on 120 Minutes (MTV2 Europe) and loved it, but didn’t make the connection for quite a while. A short while after seeing the video I got my hands on his album City and Eastern Songs (from which this track is taken), and I really took to it.

So now the process can be fully diagrammed, and the cast of characters is stunning. The torture system involves the operations division of the CIA on the implementation side. They rely heavily on contractors, it seems, in torturing people. And a special role is apparently played by a couple of psychologists. (Time used to be that healthcare professionals had an oath. It started “first, do no harm.” But, just like the Bible and the Constitution, that’s so pre-9/11. And with the American Psychological Association providing full cover, what’s the worry.)

We know that the Justice Department is right in the thick of it. Who precisely? The answer is most likely the Office of Legal Counsel—which has now emerged as what George Orwell called the “Ministry of Love” (remember: in Nineteen Eighty-Four that’s the ministry that picked and approved torture practices). But it doesn’t end with the opinion lawyers. The National Security Division is also in the thick of things, apparently. Alberto Gonzales, before he became attorney general, played station master for the initial series of torture memos. Once he landed at Justice, he kept a close watch on all torture issues and lied to Congress about it. With the attorney general’s office staking out a close interest in torture, it’s unlikely that others in the Department would have substituted their judgment for his. Thus the ball would seem to be squarely in Michael Mukasey’s court.

And finally the White House. David Addington, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley—these are all name we can now link directly to the torture system. Not just as a matter of theory. As a matter of practical application. They decided who would be tortured and how. And John B. Bellinger III, the man who keeps making a laughing-stock of himself with speeches on international law (as, for instance, when he tells us he can’t raise a legal objection to the idea of the Iranians waterboarding some captured American airman), who was legal counsel at NSC and continues now to hold that role with Condi Rice at State. He constantly issued assurances “off the record” to human rights groups and bar groups that we certainly don’t torture. And now it’s reasonably clear that he was right in the thick of the torture approval process all along.

There seems to be some question as to whether or not America tortures. I can think of a few ways to get to the bottom of the matter; Cheney, Rice, etc. for 18 months at a black site, which I understand is an intense hotel-resort-spa (at least according to Rush Limbaugh), and I’m sure we’d get to the bottom of the matter.

The nightmare started for him back in fall 2003. Bashmilah had traveled to Jordan from Indonesia, where he was living with his wife and working in the clothing business. He and his wife went to Jordan to meet Bashmilah’s mother, who had also traveled there. The family hoped to arrange for heart surgery for Bashmilah’s mother at a hospital in Amman. But before leaving Indonesia, Bashmilah had lost his passport and had received a replacement. Upon arrival in Jordan, Jordanian officials questioned his lack of stamps in the new one, and they grew suspicious when Bashmilah admitted he had visited Afghanistan in 2000. Bashmilah was taken into custody by Jordanian authorities on Oct. 21, 2003. He would not reappear again until he stepped out of a CIA plane in Yemen on May 5, 2005.

Bashmilah’s apparent innocence was clearly lost on officials with Jordan’s General Intelligence Department. After his arrest, the Jordanians brutally beat him, peppering him with questions about al-Qaida. He was forced to jog around in a yard until he collapsed. Officers hung him upside down with a leather strap and his hands tied. They beat the soles of his feet and his sides. They threatened to electrocute him with wires. The told him they would rape his wife and mother.

So I’m beginning to understand the reason for AmeriKKKa’s obsession with the Middle East; it’s all about their questionable attitude to human rights. For the average AmeriKKKan businessman it’s like a home away from home (or an office away from the office) with the main attraction for him being the absence of impediments to getting the job done (for example no quaint concern for human rights). A place where efficiency reigns! And we know how much AmeriKKKan businessmen like their efficiency…

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.

“Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.

This is how they (those wretched unter menschen we affectionately refer to as AmeriKKKans) treat their own. Imagine what these scum do to Iraqis. Try to imagine how many others have disappeared into that container, shared that same bed…

Doubtless, in some quarters, the incident will be likened to hazing, or the kind of hi-jinks found at college frat parties; “it was all good clean fun”. Our disgust will be condemned as being unsupportive of the troops, and putting them in harms way, and besides, we don’t have all the details…

Or maybe she’ll be declared a whore by the liberal media (she was asking for it).

Think it couldn’t happen here? It’s happening right now! This is exactly how it happened in Nazi Germany. First, burn the Reichstag and blame it on the “enemy.” Pass new police state laws. Disarm the people. Spread fear. Erect secret prisons and secret police. Call anyone who disagrees with you a “traitor.” Control the mainstream media. Sound familiar? This is all happening right now in the United States of Amerika, and if we don’t work to stop it, this nation will rapidly devolve into a fascist police state where no one is truly free.